Okay, so longtime readers will know that I occasionally sponsor group writing projects here at the site for others to participate in - epiBlogue was such an example, for those who remember that, as was sevenstories. So I've got an idea for a new one, and I thought for now I'd just throw the idea up here at the journal and see if it sticks with anyone:

I create a futuristic city much like the one seen in the film AI - dark, full of sex and violence, with a strange history, etc. Then I create a blog documenting twelve weeks of that city's history, told in short-story form; anyone interested, then, who's willing to put in a twelve-week commitment, gets signed up as a contributor to that blog. So let's say one of those people is you, for example; for twelve weeks, then, you're basically expected to write a series of small short stories all set in this city. You can invent your own characters, write any type of story you want, set it in any place in the city you want; or you could reference characters other contributors have created, make their lives intersect with your own characters' lives, either in major ways or minor in-joke ones.

Each time a contributor finished a new story, then, it would show up on the front page of the blog, and would also get categorized to each character mentioned in that story (as well as city landmarks that maybe a lot of contributors reference, etc). That way, if you were the creator of a character, you could simply click on that character's category page to see if you're the only one writing stories referencing that character, or if someone else has started referencing them. And if they have, you immediately know, and can go see what they said so that you can adjust your storyline accordingly. And then of course you could reference one of their characters as a return courtesy, and categorize that entry thusly, so that they'd eventually know that you did so. And you could even assign an RSS feed just to that character, so that your news reader would immediately tell you when someone's writing about them. And if it really took off, you and they could talk over email about creating a joint storyline for them together.

I would not be one of the contributors myself, but merely the puppetmaster; I watch all the threads for inconsistencies, arbitrate disputes between contributors over character abuse, throw in major plot advances along the twelve weeks (city riots, important visitors) that inspire all the contributors in new directions at once. My major creative input to the project, then, would be in the set-up of the city itself; I'd create a color map that one could download from the site, develop a rich and complex history that will hopefully inspire contributors, maybe even get a visual artist to do illustrations of city landmarks that are referenced a lot by contributors. My general hope, then, is that all the power of the blog format would manifest itself in two important ways: 1) all the cross-referencing of characters, and the easy way to track them, would inspire contributors to really work together and create a collective novel-length narrative; and 2) it would be especially easy for web visitors to follow along - they too could go to any particular character's information page for the latest from all contributors, or go to a contributor's page for the latest from all their characters, or go to my daily summary of everything that's transpired in the last 24 hours, with of course individual RSS feeds associated with each and every option as well. Yowza! Or, you know, you could just visit the front page of the site and follow along with everything at once, for any old-skoolers who'd want to do it that way instead.

So what do you think? Would you be a contributor if I took the time to start up something like this? I'm making it twelve weeks specifically to avoid the burnout of ongoing projects - everyone can be all inspired and write all the time for three months, then be done with it for good. And who knows - with a novel-length narrative, and a map and illustrations, it might even get picked up for paper publication. What's the critical mass of a project like this? Would five contributors be enough? Would twenty be too much? You can send all your thoughts to ilikejason at hotmail dot com; I look forward to reading them.

(Oh, and a couple of more thoughts, why not. The project would run from January 2 to March 31 of next year, when no one's on vacation and there are no major holiday weekends. I would release the city information, then, including the maps, on December 20th, so that contributors and anxious audience members could download it all and take it home for the holidays, and look over it all during the moments your family members are driving you crazy. Come one, come all - college students welcome, amateur writers, professional writers, whoever might be interested in a twelve-week commitment to something that could quite possibly be most kickass indeed. Hey, any of you fuckers...er, valued readers, want to let Cory Doctorow know about this? Or Neil Gaiman, maybe? Or maybe Wil Wheaton! Or, shit, Poppy Z. Brite! There's a bunch of famous online writers out there, in fact, who I don't know, but who maybe you went to college with or are a buddy of for some reason; in a perfect world, such a group project would be a combination of these writers and ones who write strictly for fun.)